Mass. Senate race focuses on candidates' past work

BOSTON (AP) — Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Scott Brown — both lawyers — are pressing each other to release more details about their past legal work.

Warren's campaign has released a list of cases she worked on during her career as a law professor at Harvard Law School — and immediately called on Brown to follow suit.

"Thus far, you have ignored media requests to provide a list of all of your clients and have declined to explain why you refuse to do so at the same time you are demanding such a list from your opponent," Warren campaign manager Mindy Myers said in a letter to Brown.

Brown described himself as "a small real estate closing attorney from Wrentham" who worked out of his home.

Brown has said he worked as a title agent for Fidelity National and First American and worked with smaller mortgage companies and banks including Middlesex Savings Bank, Wrentham Cooperative Bank and Hyde Park Cooperative Bank.

"I've never done any foreclosures or any subprime mortgages, it's traditional Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae loans where you go and you show up at the closing, you go through the documents, you get a house and you give out a key," Brown said at an appearance Tuesday in Worcester where he received the endorsement of former Boston Celtics great Bob Cousy.

Warren's list included six cases she worked on that went before the U.S. Supreme Court, another four that went before the U.S. Court of Appeals and three that went before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

Warren's campaign manager Mindy Myers says Warren's record shows she worked to protect "major principles of bankruptcy law that are essential to ensuring that the bankruptcy system functions to protect workers, retirees, victims, and consumers against Wall Street banks and other powerful creditors."

Among the cases cited by Myers was a 2005 Supreme Court case where she said Warren represented the AARP in an effort "to protect retirement accounts from banks and other creditors who wanted to try to take them away from people who have gone broke."

In another 2003 Supreme Court case Warren performed work for NextWave Telecom Inc. The court ruled in favor of the company and ordered the government to give back billions of dollars in unused wireless licenses, a move Warren's campaign said allowed the company to try to meet its obligations and pay pension fund investors.

In another case before the Court of Appeals in 2001, Warren worked to help Attorney Jan Schlichtmann, who earned national fame but went bankrupt defending a group of Woburn families who claimed two companies poisoned city water.

Schlichtmann's case was chronicled in the best seller "A Civil Action," with John Travolta playing him in the movie version. Warren worked on an appeal he filed seeking to keep about $200,000 in fees he earned in a separate case. Schlichtmann lost.

The Warren campaign declined to say how much she received for her work.

Brown's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for more details about his legal work or how much he earned.

Financial records Brown filed as a state lawmaker show that from 2005-2009 he reported earning between $60,000 and $100,000 from his law office. That's in addition to his salary as a lawmaker. The Warren campaign said earlier reports from 1999, 2002 and 2003 showed Brown reporting earning more than $100,000 from his law office.

"Massachusetts voters have a right to know how your clients' interests might have been affected by your votes in the legislature — and how your votes might have been affected by your clients' interests," Myers wrote.

Brown, however, has criticized Warren for her legal work in the 1990s for LTV Steel as it fought mandated health care payments.

"Voters are learning that contrary to your claim to always stand with middle-class workers, you have instead chosen to stand with large corporations and against workers," Brown wrote in a letter to Warren last month.

On Tuesday, the Brown campaign released an Internet video again focusing on the case and faulting Warren for what it called her "stunning inability at last night's debate to defend her work on behalf of a giant steel conglomerate attempting to deny promised health care benefits to its retired workers."

Warren campaign has said the case involved bankruptcy principles and there was never any question miners would receive full benefits.

"I have worked hard for 30 years to make the legal system just a little bit fairer," Warren said during Monday's debate.